Schrödinger's Sara
by Mingsmommy
Summary: What prompted Sara to finally let go? A little bit of angst, but I remain steadfastly hopeful. A gift for AliCat713, though nothing I could write is worthy of her. Spoilers for 9X05


A/N: Dear Santa, all I want for Christmas is Grissom and Sara since I don't own them right now.

Spoilers for 9X05

This is a gift for the amazing and awesome Alicat713; though nothing I could write would ever be worthy of her. She is one of the most thoughtful, wonderful, loving and giving people ever. I am so blessed to have her in my life.

Thanks to the always supportive and wonderful Kristen Elizabeth for the beta. I couldn't write a decent grocery list without her.

* * *

It was on their third day at sea Sara noticed the cat was following her.

She had seen him her first day on board during loading. Solid black with gold eyes, he was what Nick would have referred to as "a bruiser," easily topping twenty pounds, calmly grooming himself outside the hatch to the bustling mess.

Turning to Mick, the grizzled seaman who acted as cook and supply master, she had pointed the cat out, thinking he had come aboard from the docks in the loading and unloading of various equipment and supplies.

"He's Max's cat," the man had grunted as he heaved seventy pounds of potatoes into the storage hold. Mick's heavy Australian accent made the sound of the expedition leader's name sound more like "Mex" than "Max," but Sara had no doubt he was referring to the marine biologist who had hired her less than a week prior.

"He comes along on the voyages?" She knew she must look perplexed, but she had not considered the idea of a scientific expedition accompanied by pets.

"Sure." Mick ducked his head to wipe the sweat from his forehead against the dirty tee shirt covering his biceps. "Cat's good luck on a ship." He nodded. "Hand me that fruit, would you, miss?"

She handed him the fruit and then helped him rearrange the canned goods; then she was called to help with the onboard lab set-up for her materials analysis work and she left Mick, the mess and the cat.

The first few days loading and preparing to sail passed quickly and she was grateful for all of the work, to stumble exhausted into her cabin, fall into bed and sleep without thinking, without dreaming. As long as she was moving and working, the heavy weight of sadness couldn't settle into her chest, onto her heart.

But then the loading was done and they set sail and there was nothing to do but read and walk the deck and think until they crossed the equatorial divide.

So, she read and walked and tried _not_ to think.

She wanted to not feel the pall on her spirit. She wanted not to remember that last moment looking around their bedroom, wondering if it was the last time she would be there. She wanted to not wonder if she did the right thing. But most of all, she wanted to not hope that he would change his mind; she wanted to not be were she had spent years before…waiting on Grissom to make up his mind.

Walking was better for not thinking than reading, but work would have been better still. But she walked the decks of the ship; she stretched her muscles, felt the sun on her face, smelled the salt in the moist air.

Then she noticed the cat was following her.

* * *

The sea breeze lightly caressed the white hair of the man leaning on the railing, but was only able to move it slightly, occasionally lifting random strands. He was intent, Sara thought, on studying the foamy spray of the cut the prow made as it sliced through the water. So, she was surprised when, without looking up, he inquired, "You're not seasick are you, Ms Sidle?"

"Call me Sara, please." She smiled and relaxed against the rail next to him. "No, Dr. Miller, no seasickness."

"If I am to call you Sara, then you must call me Max." His accent was tinged slightly with an upbringing along the South Carolina coast, but more than fifty years traveling the world had lightened it to only slightly there and very pleasant. "A lot of our first timers are. Seasick." Finally, he turned his crisp blue eyes to her. He had a kind face, she decided. Weathered, certainly, after so many decades at sea and working on the islands. "No seasickness and you appear to already have your sea legs. You must have sailed before."

Inclining her head in acknowledgement, "My grandfather was a fisherman."

"Ah." He turned his gaze back to the water, though not with the same intensity as before. She had the feeling he had moved from study mode to merely looking; it was a shift she had seen in another blue eyed scientist many times. "And was fishing a vocation or an avocation for your grandfather?"

She thought back to her mother's father, what a kind, quiet man he was, how he had unabashedly adored her and how his death had been the first heartbreak of her life. How the only thing he had loved more than her had been the ocean. "It was both…it was his life." She was surprised at the cool sincerity of her voice, the first real, true, unfettered thing she had said in…longer than she could remember…before Warrick? Before Natalie? "He used to say when he was sailing, he flew."

"Your grandfather was a lucky man then; to love what you do for a living is a gift a lot of people never know." He turned from his view of the water and leaned his elbows against the rail. "Searching for that is how a lot of people end up on this boat." He gave her a half smile. "You're adjusting all right?"

"Yes." She leaned an arm on the rail and jerked her head over her shoulder at the animal now sunning itself in the center of the deck, well away from the spray from the sides. "You have a cat on board."

"Yes. We do, in fact, have a cat on board." He viewed the animal with an indulgent half smile. "Sailors have believed for millennia a cat on board a ship brought the voyage luck."

Sara was surprised at how comfortable she felt; aside from some rather formal e-mails and an "all business" telephone interview, she had not had too many exchanges with Max Miller. He would have been quite the charmer in his younger days, she decided. She quirked a smile at him, "How did they know?"

The man rubbed his chin. "No cat skeletons in ship wrecks, I suppose." He smiled when she chuckled. "You lived in Las Vegas for several years; you must be familiar with the superstition of gamblers. Well, the only category of people more superstitious than gamblers are sailors."

Absently she licked her lips, tasting salt and idly hoping she had put on enough sunscreen. "I wonder why that is."

"Oh, I imagine it's a combination of a need for control against completely random forces and the human need to feel we aren't alone." He shrugged. "The idea that there is a greater force in the Universe both appeals to need for mysticism and offers a sense of comfort."

Sara stared at him, open mouthed but speechless, for a moment. First at the nearly familiar cadence of the conversation, then in frustration that she could so easily let _him_ overtake her thoughts. Was it always going to be this way?

"I'm sorry; I do tend to go on." Max gave her a tentative smile, but she still didn't speak. "Is there something wrong, Miss Sidle?"

"Sara," she said absently.

His brows climbed into his forehead. "All right, Sara…is there something wrong?"

She shook her head as if to clear it, then cleared her throat. "Your cat appears to be stalking me."

He looked towards the animal who blinked and appeared entirely unconcerned at being discussed. "Ah. So, my cat is dogging you?" He smirked when she snorted, then appeared to consider her statement. "Well, I would suggest a restraining order but I'm afraid reading legalese is not among Ding's innumerable talents."

She laughed. "Ding? Short for dinghy?"

He shook his head, smiling. "No. Short for Schrödinger." He quirked an eyebrow at her. "He must be attracted to you because of your physics background."

She blinked, looked at Max, then at Schrödinger, then back at Max. "Well, I suppose it's a little more original than Fluffy."

"My wife was a theoretical mathematician; she wrote several papers on Schrödinger operators." He inclined his head towards the animal. "She always said nothing embraced all possibility quite like a cat."

Sara smiled, then chuckled in memory. "One of my college roommates was doing her honors work on quantum theory. When you asked her how she was, she never said 'fine' or 'great' or 'awful.' She would say 'Schrödinger's cat is alive' or 'Schrödinger's cat is dead.'" She snorted. "One of our suite mates was an English major; Ali's Schrödinger answers always flipped her out a little."

He laughed, easily, lightly. "Shakespeare and Schrödinger would make strange bed fellows, indeed." He thought for a moment. "Though, perhaps not. The Bard only showed us the consequences of our decisions, while Schrödinger showed us all the possibilities of never making a decision."

Frowning, Sara toed the thick coil of rope at her feet. "I've never heard it put that way."

"Until we open the box, Sara, we don't know if the cat is alive or if the cat is dead." He nodded towards Ding. "If we keep the box closed, then all possibilities remain open. The cat may be alive, the cat may be dead, the cat may have properties of being both alive and dead." He shrugged. "If we open the box, then we have to deal with the reality of what is."

"Entanglement Theory," she supplied crisply.

"All experience is entanglement; it is the very nature of experience. We become a part of all we experience; even by observing, we change the experience. Anything else is just waiting for the experience." He turned back to his perusal of the endless blue water. "It's a poor substitute for living, waiting."

She had no answer for that, as it was something she knew from the experiences of her past and was afraid for her future.

Instead, she, too, turned to watch the seemingly infinite water as they passed over it.

* * *

She was very busy staring at the ceiling of her cabin when the thumping started. They had dropped anchor for the night and the engines had been cut, so there wasn't much noise but the lap of water against the sides once the other team members had settled into their cabins for the night. At first, she thought someone had merely bumped against her door on their way down the hall, but then it came again. It didn't sound like a knock, it wasn't rhythmic; just a solid thump against the door to her cabin at intermittent intervals.

She sat up and called, "Who's there?" She waited, but there was no answering voice so she lay back down. And the thump came again.

Carefully and slightly wary (years of law enforcement training in her muscles memory), she climbed from the bed and eased open the door, cautiously peering out into the hall. There was no one there.

Blinking against the bright lights of the passage and frowning, she started to close the door when movement from below eye level caused her to lower her gaze. Ding, the cat, stood, tail erect, and brushed past her into her cabin.

She watched the cat hop up and settle himself on the end of her bed; Sara briefly considered making a protest, but in the end, she shrugged, bolted the door and climbed back into bed. "I should probably warn you, I'm more of a dog person." In the light leaking in from outside, she could see Ding blink his golden eyes and swish his tail. "As a matter of fact, I'm in a committed relationship with a seventy pound boxer." She swallowed against the sudden lump in her throat. "Though, to be honest, we're kind of going through a trial separation right now. So, I guess it's ok for you to stay." She sniffed. "Just don't try anything funny."

That night she cried for the first time since the last time she left Vegas.

* * *

It was in the half moments, floating between sleeping and wakefulness that she missed Grissom the most.

He had always gone to sleep first and she lay beside him listening to his breathing, the way his breath would whistle slightly if he didn't close his mouth properly, how his heart beat was so steady, it lulled her to eventual sleep when she rested her head on his chest, how he would snore lightly if he had more than one beer.

She had barely slept during her months in San Francisco, simply from missing the sounds of Grissom sleeping beside her. But she learned to sleep again on the ship, with the sound of Ding's purr at the end of her bed.

And she stopped being afraid to think even though thinking hurt.

For the first two weeks, she woke up and told the ceiling, "Schrödinger's cat is dead."

She thought of Grissom and their life together. How fun it was to make dinner with him, how he griped about tofu. How he took such tender care of her after the desert, how cherished she felt. How good he felt between her thighs, what her name felt like when he grunted it against her neck. How they could sit and talk for hours, how they could lay entwined silently for longer. How he thought every problem through, then thought about it more.

She wondered if he was thinking of them now. If he would decide to join her or to tell her he never would.

Then she wondered if he were waiting on her to change her mind. Or maybe he was waiting for her to make the first move. Or maybe he didn't want her to change her mind. Or maybe they would each spend their lives waiting for the other to change their mind.

And everyday before the satellite feed communicated from the ship to the shore, she stared at her e-mail program and didn't send anything.

She missed him, she loved him. She always would, she felt as though she always had. But, here and now, what did that mean?

All possibilities were open until a choice was made.

But whose choice was it?

* * *

It was one of those "Ah-ha!" moments where something becomes so clear, everyone is amazed no one had seen it before, when she devised a new collection method that saved time, space and money for the expedition. Max was thrilled and thundered at his repeat team members, wondering _why the hell hadn't they thought of it?_

The others called her "teacher's pet" as she was both lauded and teased in the mess that evening and she felt a little lighter. The younger members of the team proposed all manner of ridiculous things she should devise new methods for and she felt the laughter vibrate through her and then couldn't remember the last time she had laughed aloud for more than a second.

It was nice, feeling as though she belonged. She had forgotten just _how_ nice it was and as she and Ding made their way to her cabin, slightly buzzed from an extra glass of wine Max had urged on her, she told her feline roommate, "That was fun."

Her first thought the next morning was of the evening before, the next thought was of Grissom. Progress, she thought with a bit of satisfaction, since it was the first time he hadn't been her first thought and she told the ceiling, "Schrödinger's cat shows properties of being both alive and dead."

From then on, she began to lose the feeling of being "the new girl" or "the outsider." The team and the crew interacted seamlessly and she felt free to form friendships. She helped Mick cook pasta and tolerated his teasing over her vegetarian diet. Two of the female grad students sought her out for games of Scrabble and then word got out she not only played poker, but was good at it and she was continually urged to join the semi-weekly games (sometimes she did and sometimes she didn't). She spent hours listening to Max tell stories of the ocean and the islands. At seventy-two, he swore he was retiring after the next voyage and everyone laughed, "You always say that!"

"You'll leave this boat when you're dead," Mick drawled. "We'll be throwing your carcass overboard in fifteen or twenty years."

"Make sure you do it far enough out so the decomposition doesn't contaminate the islands eco-system," Max grinned with feigned warning.

The days were busy and the work was exhilarating. No two days were the same and it was the perfect combination of physically demanding and intellectually stimulating. But most importantly, it was about life, not death. It was about making a difference and not just bringing wrongdoers to justice. Yes, there was a fair share of disappointments and things didn't always end ideally, but the percentage of life to death, hope to despair was so much greater than she had ever known.

One day, after a little over a month at sea, she donned a wet suit and helped free a bottlenose dolphin's beak from a tangle of plastic litter. She was euphoric and excited, giddy with joy.

Scientific dignity not withstanding, she was just short of skipping to her cabin to change clothes. As she moved to open the door, she told the ever present cat, "That was amazing; incredible!"

She laughed and twirled in a circle, only to come face to photo with a smiling Grissom in one of the many pictures she had taped to her storage locker the first day on board. Pausing, she reached out to trace the beloved face with the tip of her finger. "Schrödinger's cat is alive, Gris."

It was time to stop waiting.

Grissom would hover outside of the box endlessly analyzing all of the possible outcomes. She loved him and that would never change, but now it was time to love him and live, too.

* * *

She sat in front of her laptop and tried to smile; she failed miserably.

The terror she had felt trapped beneath the car in the desert with the water rushing in seemed a small and distant thing compared to the fear of what she was about to do. She had spent the last decade of her life with one thing at the center and while letting go seemed the only way to begin to finally move on, she didn't know if she knew how to live a life without Grissom at its center.

Almost in a panic at the thought, she forced herself to stop and breathe. She closed her eyes and thought of the dolphin, the slick, sensitive skin under her fingers as she stroked its back, how she felt it vibrating with life and how the same feeling vibrated into her, pulsing with energy and so, so beautiful.

Alive.

She opened her eyes and smiled as she clicked "record."

"Greetings from below the equator..."

After she hit send, she moved out of her cabin, holding the door open for Ding to pass regally through. They moved up on deck, walking slowly towards the bow.

She leaned on the rail and breathed deeply, feeling the ocean breeze touch her face and move her hair.

Despite the hum and chug of the engines, the glide of the boat seemed effortless. In the distance, a dolphin rose high out of the water in a flying arc and curved back into the ocean. She wondered if it was the same animal, but knew that there were multiple pods in the area. As if to confirm, two other dolphins broke the water nearly simultaneously.

The ocean stretched out in front of her further than she could see. Black at the horizon, blue green in front of her, white as it sprayed up, and clear in the single drop that landed on her hand. She wondered at one thing being so many things, being everything.

The boat sailed smoothly forward, the sun gleaming on the water and the dolphins leaping in the distance. And for just a moment, Sara let go of all of her thoughts and her fears and she flew.


End file.
